A three-month-long campaign conducted last year to verify the Karachi Development Authority’s (KDA) pensioners had identified 586 unverified people who had been unduly receiving monthly pensions from the KDA, a press statement issued on Tuesday quoted a spokesman for the Sindh local government minister as saying.
The statement was issued in response to media reports on the meeting of the provincial assembly’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC), held on Monday, in which it was stated that the public exchequer had been deprived of millions of rupees due to allegedly bogus payments made to the KDA’s unverified pensioners.
The LG minister’s spokesman said that the facts about the KDA’s pension affairs are contrary to the media reports on the PAC meeting. He said that participating in the meeting, the KDA’s finance director had responded factually to the audit objections discussed in the meeting.
The spokesman said the LG minister had ordered a verification drive to ascertain the genuineness of the KDA’s pensions, adding that the verification process lasted from October 2024 to December 31, 2024.
He said that the total number of KDA pensioners is 4,086, but the drive could not authenticate the bona fide status of 586 pensioners, who have not been receiving monthly pensions since January 1, 2025. An investigation is being conducted to ascertain the status of these 586 pensioners, he added.
He also said the banks used for releasing pensions summon the pensioners every six months for biometric verification, adding that the KDA also summons the recipients of pensions every six months to receive the life certificates and no-marriage certificates from pensioners and widows of the KDA’s deceased staffers for verification.
The spokesman said the PAC is yet to send any letter to the KDA to suspend the services of the authority’s finance director, contrary to the news reports based on the PAC meeting. All these facts about the KDA’s pension affairs will also be communicated to the PAC, he added.
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